RAA - rubyscript2exe/0.1.17

RubyScript2Exe transforms your Ruby script into a standalone
Windows executable. You can look at it as a "compiler". Not in
the sense of a source-code-to-byte-code compiler, but as a
"collector", for it collects all necessary files to run your
script on an other machine: the Ruby script, the Ruby
interpreter and the Ruby runtime library (stripped down for
this script). Anyway, the result is the same: a standalone
exe-file. And that's what we want!

Because of the gathering of files from your own Ruby
installation, RubyScript2Exe can only run on Windows. And when
I say Windows, I mean Windows, not Cygwin. It's not to
difficult to handle Cygwin, but the generated exe would be very
big.

There is one more advantage: Because there are some
incompatibilities between Ruby 1.6 and 1.8, you have to test
your script with both versions. Unless you distribute your
version of Ruby with your script...

The combination of Tar2RubyScript and RubyScript2Exe is of
special interest: A complete Ruby application can be
distributed as one executable (for Windows):

* Tar2RubyScript creates a standalone Ruby script (or RBA, Ruby
Archive) of the application and its directory. This RBA can
run on "the Ruby platform". This means that Ruby itself must
be installed on the targeted system.

* RubyScript2Exe avoids this dependency by compiling a
rubyscript (in casu the RBA), the Ruby interpreter and the
Ruby runtime environment into one executable.